Wednesday, May 20, 2015

The Economist this week examines the unnecessary pressure being put on Japan's new media to conform to Abe government-approved ways of thinking or to avoid examining the government's actions at all. A generous author includes a minor observation of mine. (Link)

Meanwhile, as a part of an ongoing series of conversations regarding the burning issues confronting Japan, Timothy Langley, Nancy Snow and I have a long conversation on rural depopulation, taking a big, necessary detour through the socio-economic roles of women.

Mr. Langley misspeaks at the outset as regards the ageing of Japanese society: only 1/4 of Japanese are above 65 years of age and 1/8 are above 75 years of age. Mr. Langley's percentages are for rural communities or for the so-called New Towns, the satellites cities built on farm and forest land in the 1960s. In the villages, with very few exceptions, and in the danchi, the giant public housing projects in the New Towns, the proportions of senior citizens is at 40% and on the way to 50%.

Tuesday, May 05, 2015

Nancy Snow was away two weeks ago, leaving Timothy Langley and me to carrying out a males-only exchange of views on Japan's nuclear reactor restarts, power plant siting issues, the Fukui injunction against the restart of the Takahama reactors, the US-Japan security relationship, the April local elections and the landing of a drone on the roof of the Prime Minister's Residence.

Monday, May 04, 2015

Shisaku is still on hiatus. However, I just had a conversation with Professor Noah Smith of Stonybrook on Twitter which is not entirely without interest. I nearly bring the exchage to a halt at one point with what is in retrospect is only a mildly amusing jest. To his immense credit, Professor Smith ignores my feeble attempt at humor and furthers the investigation.

Here's an even better chart of smoothed female & male working-age labor force participation in Japan and the U.S. pic.twitter.com/By3Z5JDkXS